Can we please get rid of square and circle arenas for every trials and 8 men raids?

[Welsper59]

Now, if version 4 of Diadem/Eureka/Bozja somehow manages to be more than mobs-and-FATE grind

I'm curious if you have something in mind to pull that off with a pseudo-sandbox type of content that is intended to be repeated very often but also limited (i.e. it's not the entire games worth of resources). Ultimately, that's what an MMORPG comes down to that's why. Repeated grinds.

[Sicno]

Ok, lemme put it in a different view: think of Smash Bros. and why despite the games having such varied stages with different gimmicks and environmental hazzards the competitive community have sticked with a bunch of stages that are more even and simplistic in their shape. It's to minimize the impact of the stages in the outcome of the match and let player skill be the deciding factor.

Savage and Ultimate raids and even Extreme trials are basically "proving grounds" content, with everybody's focus on performing the best they can so they can clear the fight. So while oddly shaped and bumpy arenas may seem more engaging at first, when it comes to doing those fights dying or wiping or even missing a gcd every now and then to a quirk of the terrain is bound to get people annoyed. In the same way cheesing mechanics using those same terrain quirks negates the challenge of said mechanic and is also problematic. Not to mention testing for bugs in such arenas and accounting for every possibility must be a nightmare. So while it may seem dull after doing a lot of fights with similarly shaped arenas I prefer them taking the safe approach, which also lets them focus on the design of the encounter without having the extra worry of how the terrain could mess each individual mechanic our could affect each job.

And it's not like they never try other stuff anyway. Think of the Empty Plane phase in E9S, which changes the shape of the terrain mid-fight to something that's neither a square nor a circle. Or jumping on top of a wagon and sprinting to break that chimney in O5 (Phantom Train). Is it engaging? Not really. "Oh, but maybe if they added obstacles along the way". If the obstacles are hard enought that bad RNG can mess you up that's gonna make you rage. If it's not and it's easy enough to not be a challenge then what is the point. Byakko's free fall is an obstacle course section and people HATE IT. One time is fine and cool but after 30 runs it gets annoying. Players in this game have a history of getting annoyed by transition phases or cutscenes where they can't engage with enemies and they drop their buffs or their rotations get messed up or they simply don't get to play their job. "Well then throw some adds along with the obstacles". Then that's just an add phase and we have plenty of those, while doing mechanics even, and adding a corridor to that really adds nothing to the mix.

But as it has been mentioned before, alliance raids can get more experimental with their structure and arenas. Where the stakes aren't as hard and it's ok to die every now and then to a dose of chaos. Different game environments with different expectations have different approaches to their design. Just like when casually playing Smash Bros. with friends at a random party you may use all the stages that aren't used in tournament play and have a great time and a good laugh.

[Velnora]

I'm curious if you have something in mind to pull that off with a pseudo-sandbox type of content that is intended to be repeated very often but also limited (i.e. it's not the entire games worth of resources). Ultimately, that's what an MMORPG comes down to that's why. Repeated grinds.

Are you implying the developers are incapable of creating interesting and engaging open world content?

[Welsper59]

Are you implying the developers are incapable of creating interesting and engaging open world content?

For Diadem styled content? To the point of it not ultimately becoming "more than mobs-and-FATE grind" type of content? Yes. That's what I'm implying. Hence, why I want to know if someone does actually have something in mind that doesn't devolve to that once the novelty wears off.

[Makeda]

It’s been years since I did a raid there (2017), but don’t GW2 raids use the same “omg this circle/square is so obvious” format as FFXIV.

I never progressed into ESO raiding because I made the mistake of being in a guild of “world first raiders” in their casual side chapter but because of the top guys the reqs to even enter the learning raid were insane… but vids I watched of raids there looked basically like FFXIV battlemaps with a different combat engine.

I wish I could remember what Wildstar (insert moment of silence) raids were like…

I recall City Of Heroes world bosses having an obvious container area but it’s been a while and I’m only level 4 on the re-opened server…

In other words… maybe in current MMOs it’s WoW not FFXIV that is the “odd man out”.

[Warlyx]

It was not an arena. The bosses were in the instance like trash mobs. It is similar to the bosses in the ARR instances like The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak or The Tam-Tara Deepcroft. But without a barrier which goes up 15 seconds after the boss pull. The rooms with the bosses are like other rooms in the instance.


Cheers

nowadays all the bosses in wow have a "barrier" that goes up as soon as u pull

[Shurrikhan]

nowadays all the bosses in wow have a "barrier" that goes up as soon as u pull

Tbf, that's merely because respawns aren't locked out during the encounter, unlike in XIV.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm curious if you have something in mind to pull that off with a pseudo-sandbox type of content that is intended to be repeated very often but also limited (i.e. it's not the entire games worth of resources). Ultimately, that's what an MMORPG comes down to that's why. Repeated grinds.

There have been some very interesting ideas passed around since ARR, but I don't have any on hand right now, no. Most also require at least some degree of technical invention, and coding hasn't been a strong point in XIV.

Sandpark's Frontiers design, Shougun's Airships, some FATE add-ons, FATE/Hunt interactions... there were some Eureka redesigns that allowed for a cooperative large-scale scenario version in which it wasn't just a grind zone, but I think those were off-site (with links from buried Reddit pages I don't have bookmarks of, sorry). Quite a lot that make use of the open world, but it's tremendously varied. Unlike some minor job fix suggestions, we've never gotten those to the point of silver-plater consensus of design.

[Krotoan]

That might be the case if he had asked for one specific thing else, rather than just that we not be limited solely to milk tea.

Read their other responses.

Cool, then maybe we could actually make a form of content that is challenging by way of more than just having afkers, the badly inebriated, or new people who can't follow their parties, and not insist on barely reskinned "each party to their third of the room to do identical but irrespective/independent mechanics".

such as? All the OP has asked for was things "like WoW has", which per my experience with 7 years of WoW was very pretty and environmental for sure (I liked Molten Core) but basically corridors of trash followed by an arena with a big guy in it who you do the mechanics to in a certain amount of time and correctly or wipe.

Not by way of their mechanics, they sure aren't.

Like I said to the other guy, I'm sure they're easy to you. To many they are challenging and concessions can be made to MAKE them challenging.

OP is a savage raider. Maybe don't assume that the class listed here, especially when the website so often bugs out and fails to update one's choice of character, is the highest level someone has.

OP by their admission
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...free-game-time

started less than a month ago (or they're lying) and this is all their jobs:



They haven't even scratched 60 content. There is another character with the EXACT SAME NAME on another data center. Perhaps these are the parses people are looking at. Just checked, that other characters logs are from June. They aren't the same person.

Odd. They've been steamrolled with scarcely ever a death the last... dozen or so times I've got them on roulette.

Congrats. The last 4 Rabanastre runs I had this past week all had 2 or more wipes and every single alliance had several dead people even when passed.

You realize that if anyone has prior experience from another tab-target MMO's raid scene, it's almost certainly going to be WoW, right? Given its combat differences and lack of trinity, GW2 isn't going to be comparable. No action MMORPG is going to be comparable. ESO, due to its imbalance, isn't going to be relevant. Rift, due to its customization, isn't going to be comparable. Etc., etc.

I urge you, again, to actually look at their postings. With such hits as "Yoshi P says we should be able to stop playing and that's harmful to the game".

Could we please drop the "If there's a WoW example, the OP must be trolling"? The examples were plenty relevant, noting places that, to the OP, generated a larger sense of cohesive identity for the serious content, in much the way that "Void Ark" isn't just "V1", "V2", "V3", and "V4" while not depending on sheer player count for at best middling difficulty.

Read.. their.. posts. Tell me those aren't instigating, hyperbolic, and facetious with a straight face.

Quote the part of the OP that said this. They merely gave examples of what they consider "actual raid environments" and asked for some variety in boss arenas and for a larger context by which to give identity to a raid tier as a whole. (Granted, such were immediately ignored because they came from WoW just so one could immediately ask "What do you mean by rEaL rAid enVironMents?")

Post history.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...aging-to-FFXIV

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...40#post5773540

And asking for clarification besides "what WoW has done" as in "what actual elements of it do you think make a "real raid environment" is a valid question.

But I'm surprised, if Alliance Raids already so well provide what the OP is asking for, that you can put up with their "unhealthy" and WoW-copy playstyles.

Alliance raids apply to the scant details they've given, which is why I referred to them.

[Shurrikhan]

...

Admittedly, I didn't check their data center (servers don't update particularly quickly) when quick-checking their logs. My mistake.

My issue is that you're letting the poster completely decide the validity of a given vein of complaint, despite it being held by others (many of whom have nothing to do with, say, WoW), giving us such classics as "Optional further difficulty for dungeons?! Go back to WoW!"

Such allows trolls to completely shut down areas of discussion, often despite their being topics of interest since the game's re-release.